William Bonar

In this podcast Jennifer Williams interviews poet William Bonar about the publication of his most recent pamphlet, Offering (Red Squirrel Press, 2015). They also discuss the mythology of memory, Hamish Henderson’s influence on Scots language poetry and a walk through the frozen cradle of Scotland. William Bonar was born in Greenock and grew up in the neighbouring shipbuilding town of Port Glasgow. He is a graduate of the universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde and he gained a distinction on the MLitt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University in 2008. He recently retired after working in education for 30 years and is now a full-time writer. He is a founder member of St Mungo’s Mirrorball, Glasgow’s network of poets and lovers of poetry, and was a participant on Mirrorball’sClydebuilt mentoring scheme (2009-10) under the tutelage of Liz Lochhead. His sequence, Visiting Winter: A Johannesburg Quintet, originally published in Gutter 06, was chosen for the Scottish Poetry Library’s online anthology Best Scottish Poems of 2012 and he was shortlisted for a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015. Offering won the James Kirkup Memorial Poetry Prize for 2014.